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Mulcair takes campaign to Conservative minister’s Quebec stronghold

New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair was in a buoyant mood as he set his sights on a riding held by a Conservative cabinet minister, Denis Lebel.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair told supporters at a rally in Nanaimo, B.C., on Sunday that Harper desperately signed on to a secret trade deal with 11 Pacific Rim partners simply to have something to announce on the election trail. (Ryan Remiorz / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

By Joanna Smith Ottawa Bureau

Sun., Oct. 11, 2015

ALMA, QUE.—New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair was in a buoyant mood as he set his sights on a riding held by a Conservative cabinet minister, even as Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau implied Mulcair’s seat in Outremont is up for grabs.

The NDP campaign bus rolled into Alma, Que. Thursday morning, in the newly reconstituted riding of Lac-Saint-Jean where Denis Lebel, the Conservative who served as infrastructure minister, is running for re-election.

The Conservatives kept his former riding from the so-called Orange Wave in 2011 with about 46 per cent of the vote for Lebel, but NDP staffers Thursday morning were pointing to a poll published in local newspaper Le Quotidien that showed their candidate, Gisèle Dallaire, in a close second place.

Mulcair looked straight into the television cameras Thursday morning as he delivered a message no doubt aimed at countering the personal popularity of Lebel, despite the unpopularity of the Conservatives in Quebec.

“It’s not Denis Lebel you need to look at. You must know that it is Stephen Harper who is our target,” Mulcair told the friendly crowd stuffed into a hotel conference room.

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“If we want to stop him, we must absolutely defeat Denis Lebel next Monday and also understand the only party that can defeat Stephen Harper here in the region is the New Democratic Party,” said Mulcair.

The NDP leader was not the only one showing some bravado, though, as the Trudeau campaign made the provocative move of rolling into Outremont, the Montreal riding Mulcair has held since winning a by-election in 2007.

Mulcair brushed off any suggestion this means he is in trouble there, even though his own visit to Lac-Saint-Jean was clearly designed to suggest the riding is winnable.

“It’s a free country. People can do what they want. We’ve been told for a long time that this was an ‘untakeable’ Liberal fortress. I’ve won there three times and I have every intention of regaining the confidence of the voters there, but I think Mr. Trudeau has to explain to you why he has spent most of his campaign going after me,” said Mulcair.

“My adversary in this campaign is Stephen Harper. He’s the person I have to defeat and replace to get Canada on track,” said Mulcair, although he has also devoted quite a bit of time to going after Trudeau and the Liberals on this long election campaign.

The New Democrats got a welcome boost on that front Wednesday night, when Liberal campaign co-chair Dan Gagnier resigned over news that he had provided strategic advice to TransCanada Corp. on how to lobby a new government on its Energy East pipeline project.

The proposed pipeline, which Mulcair has come out against after some initial, if conditional, enthusiasm for the idea, is unpopular in Quebec and Mulcair also jumped at the opportunity to lump it in with the Liberal sponsorship scandal.

“They can try to hide the old Liberal party all they want and put a fresh face on it. It’s still the same old Liberal party. This time, we don’t have to go back to one of the old parties,” Mulcair said.

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